The memory of students

I have found that the participants in Condition 2 recalled more words on average. This means the participants who encoded and retrieved in the same context (the classroom) recalled more words than the participants who retrieved the words in the cafe. I also found that in Condition 1 the number of words the participants recalled has a wider range. I think this means that retrieving in a different context to encoding (as in Condition 1 ) affected some participants more than others. So there was a wide spread of number of words recalled.

In Condition 2 (encoding and retrieving in the classroom) there were three modal values of words recalled. This shows that retrieving in the same context as encoding gives a consistently better recall as people recalled the same amount of words. Looking at my graph it is evident that Condition 2 have produced better results as the mean number of words is greater than in Condition 1. The median (middle value) is also significantly more in Condition 2. This proves that Condition 2 retrieved words from the word list better than Condition 1.

By manipulating the Independant variable (contexts) the dependant variable (number of words recalled from the word list) has shown a significant difference this gives me evidence that my study was successful to draw a conclusion. However the range of number of words recalled is larger in Condition 1 than in Condition 2. This means that participants in Condition 2 produced a closer number of words. This may suggest that Condition 2 who encoded and retrieved in the classroom all had consistantly good recall proving the theory of context dependent memory.

It could also mean that because participants in Condition 2 had wider spread results they were all affected by the change in context differently. Which means I can’t generalise my findings to the general public as it may be different for everyone. Relationship of results to hypothesis: My results support my experimental hypothesis. I can say this because the mean number of words recalled in Condition 2 (the participants who encoded and retrieved in the same context) was more than mean for Condition 1 (those who encoded and retrieved in different rooms.

) In Condition 2 participants recalled 13 words on average whereas in Condition 1 participants only recalled an average of 10. 3 words from the word list. This supports my hypothesis as i predicted that participants would recall significantly more words from the word list in Condition 2 (when they encoded and retrieved in the classroom. ) And that the participants in Condition 1 (who encode in the classroom and retrieve in the cybercafe) would recall less words from the word list as they were in different contexts. Looking at my results I see that this happened and therefore my results back up my original predictions.